...Dodgson, or at least we tried to go cheap. Things didn't quite work hope as we'd hoped. "Don't get cheap on me, Dodgson" is a line we love from Jurassic Park. The movie, not the book, 'cause the book didn't have any lines quite so cool.See, we managed to get a jingle for our ebook, Frankenstein, P.I. (as ridiculous a story as you're likely to read this year) and we got it on the cheap. Never mind how. We have our methods. Even at a quick 30-seconds, the Frankie jingle needed a little something to go with it so we thought, as we have thought before: "No one cares about book trailers! Let's make one to go along with our jingle!"You're right, this does not display good business sense. Neither, by the way, does being a writer. Since there are several do-it-yourself, free animation services on the web, we thought we'd create a do-it-ourselves book trailer. We dabbled at three different spots: Xtranormal, which offered some cute animations but wanted cash up front for just about any use; Animasher, which seemed the least interested in our wallet but produced a seizure-inducing spot (not that we blame the Animasher group. We just lack skills in this regard); and Go!Animate, our favorite of the group, which slips its corporate hand ever-so-slowly into your pocket and fishes out a few quarters at a time. Go!Animate even lets you build your own character -- the first one is free -- and, so, we offer to you, above, our cartoon version of Frankie, P.I.Cartoon Frankie can walk, stroll, dance, but we couldn't get him to synch to our lyrics. What are the lyrics, you ask? Here goes:Frankenstein, P.I.

…like, say, JURASSIC PARK. Or ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE. Or, for that matter, A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENUIS, which happened to be our title of choice when we started on our autobiography. (Turns out, somebody grabbed the title first, forcing us to abandon our opus.) So, absolutely, titles matter to us. This image comes to us, gratis, from the folks at publicdomainpictures.net. Iguana tell you, the price is right!

It was one of the main reasons we’ll be publishing THE ATHEIST’S DAUGHTER on our own. We wanted to keep the title we picked. This may have been a mistake.

You see, other than you and you, our fan base consist of us and us. Even the Moms say they're on a fixed income and can’t afford to buy our books. They CAN afford to buy The National Enquirer every week and PEOPLE magazine never escapes the grocery bag but, as they've pointed out, neither of those things are books. To sell copies of our new novel, we need to let the rest of the world know it’s available. To inform the world, we can either (a) pay for advertising or (b) find some book bloggers to review our tome.

We’ve been bumping elbows with the indie publishing crowd and, by and large, they tell us advertising doesn’t pay off. They also tell us that book reviews aren’t much of a help, either, but that’s not been our experience. When WICKED GAMES pleased a reviewer, sales spiked. So we eagerly began courting book bloggers, hoping to duplicate the experience.

Man, oh man, were we in for a bitter surprise. Even though we’ve told bloggers that T.A.D. is a supernatural thriller/paranormal horror story, our title has made an impact. A chunk of reviewers refuse to look at our novel, for fear it’s secretly a Christian-themed story. Other reviewers refuse to read our book, for fear it’s secretly an anti-Christian themed story. No one seems to believe a book carrying this particular title can be anything but religious or anti-religious.*sigh*

To date, we’ve knocked on twenty-five different book blogging doors. Two people have offered to read the book. We really like those two people and will like them even if they hate our novel. Because, sooner or later, we’re going to finish our next novel and we’ll need a review from someone, somewhere, to help sell the thing.

Come on in! This

is the electronic home of Renée Harrell. Did you bring any wine?

Renée & Harrell

It's about time you got here.

We aren't kidding about the wine.This is where we talk about writing... ...our writing, mostly. We also discuss kiva.org, Hunting Monsters Press, the magic bakery, self-publishing, pseudonyms, life itself -- a bunch of things.